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We were picked up at 930 sharp. We met 3 locals, Joyce (tour guide), Richy (hike guide and coffee conneissure extraordinaire), and Jimmy (the driver braving the bumpy yet interesting roads). Off we go for a drive to the location of the start of our hike. Our drive took us through many villages. Everywhere you looked the men, women, and children were hard at work maintaining their land or transporting their goods to their homes. Mode of transportation: on their heads. It is amazing to watch them do this, it really is second nature for them. Walking around with a whole bunch of bananas on your head and nothing in their hands. Truly an art. We get to our starting point and off we go. We started our hike from Richy's house and we would end up at Richy's place at the end.
I cannot even describe the scenery. It was breath taking. We literally stopped to smells the plants. On our trek we saw avocado trees, lemon trees, eucalyptus trees, orange tomato trees, passion fruit trees, apricot, coffee, banana trees, yam potatoes, uka plants, big giant banana leaf tree, rosary flower, white bell flower, corn, cabbage, lettuce, and probably more.
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| Mnambe Waterfall |
We got to the largest waterfall on Mount Kilimanjaro. Gav was brave enough to go all the way in the water; I just put my feet in. The water was so cold! Obviously since it is the run off of the snow from Mount Kilimanjaro! Once we were done playing at the falls we stopped to have our boxed lunch in a little hut overlooking the falls.
After lunch our return trek began. This hike was lots of ups and downs and quite tiring in some spots. Our tour guide wasn't even out of breath and I could hardly stand! He told us he's been hiking this trail 2-3 times / week for most of his life. We finally made it back to Richy's place where he showed us how to process coffee beans into coffee. He had some beans that had already been dried out for a few days. We took those beans and "tonga'ed" (pounded) them until the skins were off. Then we sifted all of the dried skin to leave us with just the dried beans. These dried beans cannot be broken with your teeth (or the club we were tonga'ing with). On the fire they go for 15 mins to roast. Once they're roasted we tonga again. Then the crushed beans go through a sifter and only the fine grinds are used. Richy took a cup of the fine coffee grounds and mixed it with some sugar. He asked us to put our hand out and he filled it with a spoonful of the mix; 1-2-3, down the hatch! I loved it; Gavin didn't! Then Richy put the pounded coffee grounds into the boiling water to brew. We waited for a bit then he siphoned it into a thermos. We had all had our cup of coffee in his backyard, chilling with his cousins and neighbors.....oh and the chickens that came around. After a few cups of coffee off we go to find some beer.......banana beer.
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| Connie Tonga'ing |
Since it was Eid day lots of shops weren't serving beer. We finally found a place we could enjoy a bucket of it. That's right. We all shared a bucket of warm banana beer. Lucky for us, one of the kids went to another shop to get us some banana wine. We both enjoyed it and could've easily had another. We drove back to our bed & breakfast showered up and off we went for a quick walk down the street while there was still daylight. We loaded up on a bunch of goodies to take home with us.
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| Banana Wine |
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| Banana Beer |
